We’ve all heard a LOT of different things about keywords, but what we may not have heard about recently is the idea of the long tail keyword, or a chain of words, even a chain of keywords, that form their own keyword.

For instance, “blog” and “money” might be keywords, but a long tail keyword would take these two keywords and make a new keyword out of them like “make money blogging” or “money making blog”.  Even “money blog” might be a possibility.

Using long tail keywords essentially allows you to do two things.  One, it gives you more keywords per post.  “Make money blogging”, for example, not only has itself as a keyword but also “make”, “make money”, “blog”, and “blogging”.  Two, it allows you to target your posts more specifically.  People who search for “make money” will find everything from jobs to lottery tickets, but people who want to “make money blogging” are more likely to find YOU.

So for more traffic, and more targeted traffic, consider the long tail.

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I can’t believe it never occurred to me, until I caught a post over at Daily Blog Tips, to talk about the family side of blogging, or, explaining it to your family.

Folks, if you’re anything like me, chances are your parents are probably looking at you like you’re some kind of lunatic for trying to make a living on the internet.  They know the score, you know!  They’ve seen OPRAH!  They’ve heard about the internet scammers and those identity thieves!  And there you are, being suckered right into the middle of it!

So now, in order to keep your folks from worrying, you’re going to need to know how to explain the idea that you’re a blogger to your family.

1. You’re a writer.  The great part about this term is it’s absolutely accurate.  You’re a writer, whether it’s in print or online, and even your parents know what a writer is.

2. You’re not available on-call. Just because you can work any time of the day or night doesn’t mean you’ll be available for lunch on Tuesday or to unclog a sink or kill a spider.  You’re happy to help, but you’re on a schedule and work needs to be first.  My folks are very good about this point, and so when they call, I KNOW it’s an emergency and I’m glad to help.

3. Your work may appear online, but your company is a brick-and-mortar business. Remember this–whether you own your own operation or freelance for other blogs, somewhere, somehow, they’re run by a person.  In a building, with computers and actual flesh-and-blood people.  There’s a lot of certainty in the phrase “brick-and-mortar”.

So remember, blogging can be a good living, but a lot of people likely won’t get it.

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